Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Neighbours' fury over Man United star Ronaldo's 'offensive and brutal' £4million mansion

He may be a hero to millions of football fans, but Cristiano Ronaldo's new neighbours have branded his £4million mansion "offensive, brutal and insensitive".
The Manchester United star is the latest of his team-mates to move into a vast property built in place of a knocked-down modest family house in Cheshire's "Footballers' Wives" belt.
Fed up with seeing the bulldozers sent in to flatten what they regard as perfectly good, traditional houses, residents of the village of Alderley Edge even attempted to hold a referendum to halt the trend.
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'Offensive, brutal and insensitive': (Above and below) Cristiano Ronaldo's house, which has upset his neighbours in Alderley Edge, Cheshire


Love birds: Ronaldo and new girlfriend Nereida Gallardo
But the torrent of negative descriptions of his new five-storey home is unlikely to trouble the 23-year-old Portuguese star, protected from prying eyes as he is by a high security fence and forbidding gates.
It may boast the usual footballer prerequisites of swimming pool, sauna, cinema and "media room", not to mention five bedrooms and his-and-hers bathrooms for the unmarried winger, but that cuts little ice with neighbours.
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Luxurious: The mansion boasts the usual footballer prerequisites of swimming pool, sauna, cinema and 'media room'

It was revealed yesterday that comments sent to the local council when developers applied to knock down the two-storey house that stood on the spot in 2005, residents and conservation groups slammed the proposed replacement as "overwhelming".
Martin Regan wrote that it would have a "wholly negative" effect on the local conservation area, saying: "The new building will be massively intrusive on the vistas."
He added: "The applicant might as well have proposed a three-storey block of flats."
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Rolling greens: Beautiful landscaped gardens contrast with the gaudy exterior of the house in Cheshire

Fellow neighbour John Priestley complained its "mass and scale" were out of proportion and that it would "overlook and threaten the privacy of my house and garden".
A third neighbour, Mr Patten, pointed out that the new house would be four metres higher than its predecessor and have 40 per cent more floor space.
He went on: "This development is symptomatic of what is happening more and more often within this part of the village, where existing comfortably proportioned properties sitting within mature grounds are sacrificed for the construction of larger and larger structures with the effect that the sylvan nature of the environment becomes more and more urbanised."
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An aerial view of the footballer's home which has drawn complaints from residents of Alderley Edge

The Edge Association, the group behind the referendum plan, described it as "offensive and out of scale", while the Wilmslow Trust slated the plan as "an insensitive and brutal proposal that does not respond to the architectural challenge of the site".
However, planners in Macclesfield rejected their submissions and gave permission, and following its completion it was bought earlier this year by Ronaldo for just under £4million.
The spread of similar mansions has been dubbed the "Rooney effect" after Ronaldo's Manchester United team-mate knocked down a five-bedroom house in neighbouring Prestbury to make way for a £4.5million home.
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Hi-tech: The kitchen boasts every modern convenience, with stainless steel applicances and slick black units

Footballers Wes Brown and Mikael Silvestre have acted similarly in Alderley Edge.
Planners say wealthy buyers today demand such facilities as en-suite bathrooms and swimming pools that older homes lack, and they cannot refuse planning permission simply because neighbours prefer the existing property.
The referendum plan has now been scrapped as the cost would have meant the village was unable to afford to put up Christmas lights this year, but its sentiment was carried by 176 votes to 11 at a public meeting earlier this month.
Martin Sinker, of the Edge Association, said: "We don't like the principle of demolishing perfectly good houses and putting up huge mansions - it's environmentally unsound and it's changing the social profile of the area.
"We've got nothing against footballers like Mr Ronaldo, but the house is very big for the site it's squeezed onto, and it's exactly the sort of thing we're trying to discourage."

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